ORLANDO, Fla. – Nikki Fried was effusive on Zoom Wednesday.
The Florida Democratic Party chair had spent the night celebrating a special election win that saw a Florida House seat flipped from Republican to Democrat.
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Democrats had crowed about winning some local races in 2023, particularly the Jacksonville mayoral race, but even though Florida House District 35 has a fairly blue population, the Democrats are taking the win as a sign of something they haven’t had in a few years: Momentum.
“What you saw not only in the (Jacksonville) mayor’s race…and our great victory last night, is that our Democratic base is motivated,” Fried said. “But more importantly, we’re also getting across-the-aisle crossover from independents and moderate Republicans who are no longer buying on what the Republicans are selling.”
Lake Nona businessman and veteran Tom Keen faced Osceola County School Board member Erika Booth in the special election for Florida House District 35 Tuesday. The winner would fill out the remaining term that was vacated by Fred Hawkins, a Republican who left to become president of a state college in South Florida.
Dr. Jim Clark, UCF professor and News 6 political analyst, said Hawkins, in 2022, beat the Democratic challenger to win the district by 11 points.
On Tuesday night, Keen, the Democrat, beat Booth by 3 points, representing a 14-point swing from Republican victory in 2022 to Democratic victory in 2024.
“In politics, that’s huge,” Clark said.
“It was a safe Republican district up until (Tuesday),” Clark added. “The Republicans won easily last time, and this time the Democrats won by 3 points. And they were vastly outspent (by the Republicans).”
Who voted for Keen?
Florida House District 35 encompasses part of East Orange County and all of East Osceola County.
Keen won the vote in Orange County, and Booth won in Osceola County. However, the Orange County portion of the district has a larger population, while the Osceola portion is more sparsely populated.
Still, more Republicans turned out to vote than Democrats, according to Matthew Isbell, a data consultant who often works with Democratic campaigns. GOP voters accounted for 44.2% of the vote, while Democrats only accounted for 39.8% of the vote.
What put Keen over the top? No party affiliate voters accounted for 16% of the vote. Isbell estimates that 65% to 70% of those voters went with Keen.
“If you’re a Republican, you can get this from one of two perspectives,” Isbell said. “Either NPAs that are going to show up in November rejected your candidate pretty widely, or the anger of much more liberal NPAs is so high that they disproportionately showed up. Neither of these is really a good thing for Republicans because it at least heightens an anger and a frustration.”
‘A model that we can then replicate’
Fried said that Democratic leaders from all levels of government helped Keen with canvassing, from Rep. Maxwell Frost to party chairs from Orange and Osceola counties. They turned out supporters to help make calls and knock on doors.
“We had literally 200 or 300 volunteers that had signed up to just walk and knock on doors,” Keen said. “We had, I don’t know, 400 or 500 people that signed up to make phone calls and text. So those volunteer efforts also paid off.”
Fried said Keen’s victory proved a robust volunteer campaign can pay off against a well-funded campaign with money for ads.
“This is exactly what we hoped for last night was a model that we can then replicate across the state,” Fried said. “And now we take this model and we make sure that the rest of our party chairs and a local level, our candidates understand what worked and what didn’t work.”
The Keen campaign also hammered on two issues they believe resonated with voters: property insurance, and abortion.
News 6 asked viewers recently what issues they thought lawmakers should be focusing on during the annual Florida Legislative Session, and property insurance was overwhelmingly the number one issue.
While state lawmakers acknowledge the outcry from the public on property insurance, and there are some bills on the issue during the session, the legislative leaders say they aren’t planning to make any major moves to lower property insurance rates this session. They want to see how reforms passed in the previous year work to stabilize the market.
Keen held two listening sessions on property insurance, in addition to regular campaigning, and he said it’s the number one thing volunteers heard about from voters.
“Everybody pays property insurance, whether you’re renting, and you and you pay it via your landlord and your rent, or you’re in your home, and you’re paying it directly to the insurance company. Everybody’s seen it. My next-door neighbor, for example, went from $1,700 a year to $4,000. That’s just unaffordable for many, many Floridians, and that goes across all parties.”
Clark said that sentiment could be a sign that Fried is right, and voters may think Republicans are not handling issues in Florida properly.
“I think (Republicans) thought abortion, war on Disney, and their handling on property insurance would help them. They’ve taken two stabs at fixing insurance and neither one of them has worked,” Clark said.
A focus on abortion rights didn’t seem to help Democrats in 2022 in Florida. This time around, however, the Democrats may have help on the ballot in the form of a constitutional amendment to allow abortions in Florida up to viability.
The amendment is currently pending review by the Florida Supreme Court. Should it make the November ballot, Democrats are hoping to see voter turnout levels similar to what other abortion initiatives have achieved across the country.
“In marginal districts where (Democrats) are close, they’re going to be able to benefit greatly if there is an abortion measure on the ballot in November,” Clark said.
Signs of life?
Having proof of performance is going to be crucial to the Florida Democratic Party this year especially. After the 2022 election, many pundits declared the state party all but dead. Since 2020, the Florida Democratic Party has been losing hundreds of thousands of registered voters, some becoming NPA voters, some even Republicans.
Registered Republican voters overtook Democrats in Florida in 2021 for the first time in over a century, and the Republican Party continues to grow.
Clark declared the long-purple Florida officially a red state in 2022. He says that’s still the case, but there may be signs of life in the Dems yet. That doesn’t mean he thinks the party will overtake Republicans this year though – far from it.
“They’re not going to win in North Florida, for example, they’re not going to win in Sarasota,” Clark said. “But picking their shots and running hard, I think they can make some gains, and I think Republicans are going to have to rethink some things.”
That will require money, something Democrats in Florida have also been lacking as donors have remained reticent to help the flagging party.
“The goal then is for the next couple months, raise the money, try to convince some donors that have maybe stepped away to come back in, seed some money which can hopefully feel some more pickups for Democrats,” Isbell said. “In 2024, the goal is not to flip the House or flip the State Senate. It’s to net some seeds to show, ‘Look, we’re slowly coming back. Please keep funding us money.’”
That will still require something Democrats have not had much of lately – quality candidates.
“They just don’t have the horses. They have trouble finding candidates that are really going to move the needle,” Clark said.
Fried said the next step is recruiting aggressively for candidates in races up and down the ballot. She said the goal of this election was ending the Republican supermajority in the Florida House. While she wouldn’t get into specific numbers, Fried said the party planned to compete “everywhere.”
“Every single person in this state deserves a representative that is going to fight for them. And unfortunately, a vast majority of the people of our state don’t have that representation today,” Fried said.
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